One of the
thorniest obstacles on the road to Middle East peace is the question of Arab
Palestinians displaced by the creation of the nation of Israel. This issue
should not be confused, however, with Yasser Arafat's demand for a 'right of
return' for all Palestinians. The reason is that Arafat an Egyptian
terrorist has never defined 'Palestinian' in his demand for a 'right of
return'.

There has never
been a 'Palestinian' culture, a 'Palestinian' language, a 'Palestinian'
government or a 'Palestinian' nation. Until the 1920s, the term
'Palestinian' was universally understood to mean the Jewish people living in
the region of the Ottoman Empire called Palestine. Only after the creation
of the State of Israel in 1948 did the idea of a separate Arab Palestinian
people come onto the scene.

There are really
three groups of Arab 'Palestinians' to be dealt with now:

Non-Jews
who were living in the lands apportioned to the Jewish State in May of 1948

Arabs who
have moved into Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and Gaza since the
creation of Israel

The flood
of anti-Jewish thugs Arafat has been bootlegging into Israeli territory to
further his goal of destroying the young Jewish State.

Only the first
group, fewer than a million people, has a legitimate claim. They deserve our
sympathy, because they have been shown none at all by their Arab 'brothers'
in the surrounding Islamic despotisms; these have chosen to do absolutely
nothing for legitimate Arab refugees, because they want to use them as
cannon-fodder in their propaganda war against Israel.

There were
approximately the same number of Jewish refugees resident in the Arab
nations of the Middle East as Arabs resident in Israel. Persecuted in
Muslim nations, the Jews were re-settled in Israel. Not so the Palestinian
Arabs: they were told by Trans-Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to wait
in refugee camps in Trans-Jordan; they were promised that the Jews would be
driven into the sea, and then the Arab Palestinians could have the Jews'
lands and houses.

Israeli Tourism
Minister Benny Elon's peace plan would accommodate the legitimate Arab
refugees: Trans-Jordan, the state created by the League of Nations in 1921
for Arab Palestinians, would be recognized as their homeland, but they would
also be recognized as Jordanian nationals resident in Israel. Their 'right
of return' would be the right to go to Jordan as citizens of the Hashemite
kingdom if they chose; their right to reside as foreign nationals in Israel
would be respected as long as they were law-abiding.

The millions of
other, spurious 'Palestinians' like Arafat himself would be expected to
return to their legitimate homelands in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the
other Muslim lands from which they have been imported as PLO mujihadeen, or
'holy' warriors against Israel.